Papa John's Blames Obamacare for Raising Prices on Pizza

Are you a Papa John's pizza fan? Get ready to shell out about 11-14 cents extra per pizza.CEO John Schnatter says thanks to Obamacare he now has to actually provide his employees with health coverage (durr!), which means he'll have to charge you, middle-class customer, more money for those pizzas.

Bah! Obamacare! Dagnabit you wreck everything!

Yeah, just playing my part. That's presumably what we're all supposed to say. But really, this is just Schnatter being a faithful Romney fundraiser. Oh, you didn't know that? Oh yeah, Schnatter has just politicized pizza. First Chick-fil-A and now this. Say goodbye to the good old days when you could just buy junk food and only worry about your waistline. Now you have to worry about your politics, too.

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Here's the thing: Papa John's does not have to pass the health care costs on to its customers. It's a publicly-held company, which means it could just send slightly less profit to its already-wealthy shareholders. Or Schnatter could be a big hero and take a pay cut as an already-overpaid CEO. Bwa ha ha! I was just joking about that one. That's a crazy idea.

Nope, instead he's passing the costs onto his customers. And he's making a big, whiny stink about it -- as a favor to his good buddy Romney. What if franchise owners have to cut jobs?!? (Like a kid threatening to take away all his toys if you don't play his way.) What's all the fuss about when Schnatter also says, "But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb Obamacare."

You didn't hear a peep out of Schnatter when he added a $2.00 delivery fee back in 2003. He added that fee because gas prices were in fluctuation as a direct result of the volatility in the Middle East due to the War in Iraq (coughcough BUSH cough cough). By the way, not a dime of that $2.00 went to the drivers.

But hey, if you like your pizza and chicken sandwiches with a side-order of political bitterness, welcome to our future. It gives me sour stomach. We all know business owners make big campaign donations and most of the time we're happy if that flies under the radar. That's their business ... I guess. But when business owners bring politics literally to the dinner table -- yuck. No thank you.

What do you think about Papa John's passing its new health care costs on to customers?